Godot Engine – Free and open-source 2D and 3D game engine - <AUTHOR> https://godotengine.org/ <comment><USER2> This is a lot like an open source Unity. It is trying to be pretty comprehensive, and while a little thin in areas, they are doing a great job-- a lot of value for the "cost" (which is namely, learning the new platform.)

The 2.x series is current, but 3.0 which is in the final stages is a big upgrade, with physically based rendering, a lot better shadow system, support for multiple programming/scripting languages and a visual programming language (for designers and artists to use, though its fully capable large scripts are harder to do visually.)

Very excited about this project and can't wait for 3.0.

<comment><USER3> I'm having a hard time finding much about the visual language, but does it happen to convert into a proper text-based scripting language? I love the idea of my designer being able to piece some stuff together with next to no programming knowledge, and me coming in later and editing it in a text form.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if it "converts" in the sense it can be exported, but it is a literal 1 to 1 mapping of the GDScript language (or a subset of it), so such a conversion should be possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm using it every day at work.

I come from phaser and am currently working as a game designer. Godot was just what I needed since I wanted a visual editor(it makes lots things quicker) but still be able to code(unlike construct, for example). I also needed to test my stuff on mobile and Godot can export to android in seconds.

The scripting language took me a week to learn and two to feel confortable with, though I think people coming from c#/java have a harder time getting used to its simplicity. 3.0 will support c# and potentially anything that compiles to a dynamic library thanks to GDNative.

I contrast, Unity to me always felt like this huge Rube Goldberg machine I have to set in motion to do anything so if you want something that starts up in seconds and has fewer dependencies I really recommend it.

<comment><USER5> I've used Godot a few times and found it pretty promising. The visual editing is a cool added value that wasn't there the last time I used it. It's not something I would personally use, but I've worked with artists/designers who have made use of similar tools with Construct and GameMaker.

The last time I started work on a new game I checked out Godot again, but ultimately I went back to GameMaker Studio.

I really think Godot has some real potential, but having the console exports for PS4 and Xbox One are pretty critical.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, I can't consider any engine that lacks support for the modern consoles. Given how brutal the industry is in general, you can't afford to leave money on the table by giving up potential console ports.

That said, I understand why it's not supported currently. The process to get anything done on Xbox or PS4 is laborious to say the least, and I am unsure how an open source project would accomplish it without being a standalone entity like Unity, Epic, or GameMaker.

<comment><USER7> Monogame, for example, supports PS4, Xbox One, and Switch, while still being run as an open source project.

<comment><USER8> Monogame is not so much a game engine as it is an I/O framework. It's got primitives to get input, to draw on screen and output sound and really barely more than that.It's much more fair to compare it to SDL than to a full-fledged engine like Unity. It has some of the elements you need to build an engine, like asset management and stuff, but it's really bare-bones and expects you to design all the higher level logic yourself.

And honestly, that's fine. It's 2D only (afaik) and designing your own main loop is a piece of cake anyway.

The only real problem I have with Monogame is that it's cross-platform only really in theory. In order to build your games for multiple platforms you need to use different forks of the codebase, or at least that's how it was when I tried it.

<comment><USER7> That's all true, but the point was that it's an open source project (in governance as well as license) that supports console platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They've very recently released a Patreon and it seems to be speeding up development considerably, so it's worth giving a look if you're using Godot.

[https://www.patreon.com/godotengine](https://www.patreon.com/godotengine)

</comment><comment><USER10> From what I see, it's a complete IDE and one can make a game without any other dependencies, which is really cool. It would make an awesome tool for Ludum Dare.

Does anyone know how it compares with other OSS game IDE/engine?

Uses Lua for scripting:

        * Moai
        * Defold (Candy Crush)
        * Love2D

Python-based:

        * pygame

Javascript:

        * Phaser (only targets browser/HTML5)

Others:

        * Cocos2d-x

<comment><USER11> It's worth noting that Godot 3.0 will be supporting C#, Python, etc.

<comment><USER12> Their documentation goes into detail on why they dropped Lua, Squirrel and Python in the first place. It's interesting that they'd then bring Python back.

<comment><USER13> I don't think they intended to bring it back-it's just one of many languages that you can use now that Godot can use native code for scripts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Deponia's iOS port ([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/deponia/id953047550?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/deponia/id953047550?mt=8)) uses this. That should really be on top of thow showcase page [https://godotengine.org/showcase/](https://godotengine.org/showcase/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Almost all of this is impressive and looks great, but personally I am not a fan of "VisualScript".

[https://godotengine.org/article/godot-getting-more- languages](https://godotengine.org/article/godot-getting-more-languages)

I have yet to see a "Visual" programming environment that is even close to as efficient as normal programming. I may well be in a minority on this one, but surely time spent on this would better be spent in other areas like improving C# interoperability etc?

I know the intention does not appear to be to replace actual programming, but I think their use-case is weak and put in because it was someone's pet project. Not trying to be ultra-critical, but just think this is wasted resources, which could be better spent elsewhere.

Interested to see what people think about this.

 _EDIT: Should have phrased this better. So to be clear, I am asking what people think about the relative merits of Visual Scripting and not what part of the project has a higher priority._

<comment><USER16> > Not trying to be ultra-critical, but just think this is wasted resources, > which could be better spent elsewhere.

This is an open-source project. Priorities are defined by what the developers need for their own projects, and if there's any time left by what they want to spend their spare time on.

I for one am glad that someone decided to contribute a C interface that is friendly to most languages with C/FFI capabilities to allow people to more easily integrate whatever language they want, rather than providing tighter integration with a single language that is a second class citizen on all the platforms I care about.

If you think C# integration is more important, go ahead and contribute to it.

They have just recently managed to get enough money through Patreon to pay for their main developer to work full-time on the engine, and they are planning to let patrons vote on which features get worked on for the next release. So if you don't have the time or drive to contribute good C# integration, you could donate and vote for C# integration to be picked up by the core developer(s).

<comment><USER15> This really was not the main thrust of my question. It is completely obvious that the developers, or anyone else contributing can work on any aspect they choose. I am far more interested in a discussion about the merits of a Visual Scripting approach.

I should probably have worded my comment better and have added a small addendum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here is a video [0] showcasing the new features of Godot 3.0

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XptlVErsL-o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XptlVErsL-o)

</comment><comment><USER18> I have tried to use it something like 2 years ago and just gave up in front of the poorly documented custom scripting language they used.

Has this changed? I think they were pondering switching to python or lua?

One of the main strength of its main competitor Unity is that it uses C# and the .Net framework. It comes with many usable tools from the whole C# ecosystem.

<comment><USER19> Good news everyone!

[https://godotengine.org/article/beta-release-python- support](https://godotengine.org/article/beta-release-python-support)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6MsqsJqnao&t=2h35m09s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6MsqsJqnao&t=2h35m09s) (Emmanuel Leblond at EuroPython 2017)

<comment><USER18> Ok I'll probably give it a try again after the 3.0 release. I really want an OSS alternative to unity!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great to see Godot on the front page of HN. I have used Godot, and it's a great piece of software. I have not used any other open source game engine that is so feature rich, and you can build very complex games in it. And deploy them on all the popular platforms (mobile and desktop). Okam studios (Juan's company again) uses it for all their work.

I personally know the founder/owner of Godot, Juan Linietsky. He is a great and a very down to earth guy. It was amazing to be in his company.

Here's a shout out to Juan, for your and your team's great work! Keep.it up and thank you for giving Godot to us!

PS: Juan if you're reading this, I'm Anon.

</comment><comment><USER21> I added a flatpak version of the editor to flathub, in case anyone wants to test it: [https://flathub.org/apps.html](https://flathub.org/apps.html)

<comment><USER14> Thanks! Worked flawlessly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It is remarkable what this team achieved in terms of how lightweight it feels, the shape and portability of the code-base and how high quality and full featured it is, given the complexity of the domain.

IMHO, it deserves to be in the [http://aosabook.org](http://aosabook.org) series as open-source code-bases you would read and learn from.

</comment><comment><USER23> I am always amazed by big open source projects like this. It's impressive on how high quality everything seems.

<comment><USER24> Yep me too! The amount of work that goes into something like this is quite frankly astonishing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Atomic Game Engine ([https://atomicgameengine.com/](https://atomicgameengine.com/)) also looks interesting since it supports C++ and C# among other languages.

<comment><USER26> With 3.0, Godot officially supports C, C++, C#, GDScript and D, with unofficial bindings for Python, Nim, and probably others (those are only the ones I know about).

<comment><USER25> But 3.0 is still in a very early stage (and several years in slow development?). Atomic Game Engine seems more mature.

<comment><USER27> Godot 3.0 has been one year in development (since the release of Godot 2.1 in August 2016), and I wouldn't say it's in a "very early stage".

It's almost feature-complete, tons of bugs have been eradicated already, and the stable release is should be 2-3 months away.

As for slow developments... I don't know where you're taking that? Godot has dozens of commits every day, and the pace at which 3.0 features were implemented is honestly impressive (I'm obviously biased as a Godot dev, but check the GitHub repo [0] and the monthly progress reports on the devblog [1]).

Godot has been in development since 2007, open sourced in 2014, and has had 400+ contributors [0] over 3 years vs 32 [2] for Atomic over 2 years. On the other hand, young Atomic is an overlay on the mature Urho3D project with 100+ contributors [3] and over 6 years of development.

Both Godot and Atomic have their strengths and weaknesses, and are IMO two great open source game engines - but as far as maturity goes, I think the sheer size of Godot (both in terms of community and git/issues/PRs activity) compared to Atomic says a lot.

[0] [https://github.com/godotengine/godot](https://github.com/godotengine/godot) [1] [https://godotengine.org/devblog](https://godotengine.org/devblog) [2] [https://github.com/AtomicGameEngine/AtomicGameEngine](https://github.com/AtomicGameEngine/AtomicGameEngine) [3] [https://github.com/urho3d/Urho3D](https://github.com/urho3d/Urho3D)

<comment><USER25> I see. It is interesting to see the comparison of these two engines besides languages support. So far the main advantage for me for Atomic is its stable support of C++ and C# languages compared to Godot's dynamically typed scripting language.

<comment><USER28> Actually Godot supports C++ alongside gdscript. You don't need to wait for version 3 for it.

<comment><USER25> As I remember it is not quite the first-class citizen in Godot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A little late to the party on this one, but does anyone have experience using Godot to build a multiplayer game? I'm thinking more along the lines of 4 player coop, not MMO.

I've been playing with a few different libs, mainly trying to stay in the JS space, and as far as I can tell the only real way this is achievable is via websockets. I have no illusion of this game ever making even beer money, it's really just for fun and to see if I can, but I'd still rather not blow a bunch of time running down the wrong roads.

I was just about to start playing with Love2D, since they have some UDP socket libs, but I'd be starting completely new in Lua, so if Godot had similar capabilities and people have seen success there I'd be open to that instead.

<comment><USER30> Godot has built-in high level networking for multiplayer purposes. I don't remember if it was starting from 2.x, but definetly in 3.c

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I recently got into Panda3d[1]. The Blender3D[2] (an excellent general purpose computer graphics tool) exporter is amazing. I don't even have to change the materials really. The "autoshader" uses blenders normal, emit, spec, and diffuse maps, along with the alpha from PNG's right out of the box.

Amazingly easy to use if you like python as well. If you're tired of GUI based game engines, I highly recomend taking a look.

EDIT: There is also a physically based shading set-up. But my laptop isn't good enough to play around with it.

[1]: [http://www.panda3d.org/](http://www.panda3d.org/) [2]: [https://store.blender.org/](https://store.blender.org/)

</comment><comment><USER32> How easy is it to plug to native Android API?

Any way you can just use this engine as a View in your already existing Android native app? (like with LibGDX)

</comment><comment><USER33> Bonus points for making this work in Haiku[1]! While I doubt that this has any real value in itself, it's always nice to see that the Haiku project is alive.

1\. [https://www.haiku-os.org](https://www.haiku-os.org)

<comment><USER34> I got curious to see how much effort was spent on this task.

Following the commit log of the coder who ported to Haiku, it was a matter of mostly adjusting the build process/includes to point to the right lib and fixing some method signatures.

[https://github.com/godotengine/godot/commits?author=Max- Migh...](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/commits?author=Max-Might)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I hope the quality of their pathfinding code is not indicative of the overall quality of this engine: [https://github.com/godotengine/godot/blob/master/core/math/a...](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/blob/master/core/math/a_star.cpp)

They scan the entire open list and recompute the heuristic value for every node all so they can find the min. Yikes! Seriously guys, implement a binary heap. It's easy and your pathfinder will be much faster for it!

<comment><USER36> Why not open an issue with references on how to improve it?

It's open source. You could even go ahead and submit a PR with your improvements.

<comment><USER35> I could indeed and thank you for the suggestion. However I'd need to be motivated enough to spend time submitting tickets (good tickets!) to a project I'm not currently invested in. Which I am not.

I guess the point of submission is to draw attention to the library and garner community comments. I feel I've made my contribution to that discussion.

<comment><USER37> This was pretty much my experience with getting a project posted in HN. A bunch of bugs reported in the HN comments, and not a single issue opened on GitHub.

Since I wasn't the one who posted it, the only reason I found the bug reports is because a friend recognized my username on GitHub, and sent me a message about it. I would have preferred bad tickets to total silence...

<comment><USER38> The real takeaway here is that the barrier to reporting bugs for your project is too high.

<comment><USER39> GitHub has made reporting bugs extremely easy. It's sheer laziness that most don't bother.

<comment><USER38> Replace _file a bug on GitHub_ with _sign in using Facebook Connect_. Is the amount of effort it takes really the only conceivable reason someone could have for opting out? (And regardless, threshold of effort isn't even a bad reason for not doing something.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Had a quick look through the showcase, looks like mosty small indie titles or developers personal projects - which is cool, but have any larger games shipped with Godot? Any titles we might have heard of?

<comment><USER41> There are several big games published with Godot. The author used this program with his team to develop video games for his studio. Still not AAA but big enough to know it is worth it. Game maker suffered from the same criticism up until a big wave of popular games came out of it. You shouldn't judge an engine by the games made with it.

<comment><USER42> It's hard not to judge an engine by the games made with it... To me that's like not judging a racecar by how fast it goes, sure there is other criteria but that's the meat.

<comment><USER43> I think a better way to phrase it is that judging an engine by the games they've been made with it will give you an incomplete picture: you can only see what is possible, not what is impossible (and even with the possible, you only see what the people use it can do which is affected by their resources and their skills).

It is better to evaluate the engine yourself for the project you are planning to do with the requirements it has (not making the entire project, of course, but if you - say - want to create a huge detailed world you can procedurally place entities in the world and see how the engine copes with that and if it provides tools to address any issues).

<comment><USER44> > you can only see what is possible, not what is impossible

but if you see a similar game already made, then you can clearly claim that it's possible in the engine. Saves time and effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> How's the performance of the resulting games? With unity I've found that it's a mixed bag, but it's hard to know if that's the fault of developers or the engine.

<comment><USER46> The problem with generic engines, is that the type of game has a diffrent performance requirement. RTS can live with physic-sim updates every 0,25 seconds, which is not usefull for a jump & run or fps game. Thus the highest requirement defines the engine, which is a complete waste for some games and limits performance.

I dont know if you can configure the framerates and engine internals here.

Next problem is that you need to write a lot of partially performance intensive game logic code (pathfinding etc.).. which again makes sense to write in the engine native language.

There is a reason why game specific engine exist- and if i would dev a new game today, i would choose- the one os-game that is allready as close as possible to the idea port that to a dedicated engine.

Its way too much work to fork a generic engine to a high-performance specialisation.

<comment><USER47> I think it really depends these days. You can make a lot of games in a general case engine up to and including those that you might think need a specific set of tradeoffs they might not provide adequately. At the same time it can be easier to not have all the unwanted cruft. It's about where you want to put the time and effort and I'm not sure that's very easily generalizable right now.

I do think Unity is beginning to jump the shark a bit with what seems like a stronger focus on ancillary services rather than their core offering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm using this right now to write a game. I've never developed a game before, so I don't have any comparison with other engines. So far I like it. I'm not a huge fan of the IDE, but the gdscript language isn't hard to pick up at all, so I just avoid it and use vim. I'm excited to see where it goes as it feels like a great starting point for people like me who want to make a hobby game, but also feels polished enough that I could see a professional using it.

</comment><comment><USER49> Can anyone experienced in this space comment on how this tool compares to the Cocos2d family (e.g. Cocos2d-x), specifically in regards to 2D games?

</comment><comment> n-gauge I recently bought construct 2 after trying many open source alternatives. The issue I have with some of the open source stuff is when you want to use pixel art - it insists on re scaling either the camera (in a 2d scene) or the pixel art itself. It's a turn off that stops me from going any further with the product.

Hopefully Godot doesn't exhibit this behaviour.

<comment><USER50> Godot does default to scaling sprites, but you can choose to not have it do that. You can also change the default on a per-project basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> openSUSE community packages for the editor:

2.x

[https://software.opensuse.org/download/package?project=games...](https://software.opensuse.org/download/package?project=games:tools&package=godot)

3.0 git (not released yet)

[https://software.opensuse.org/download/package?project=games...](https://software.opensuse.org/download/package?project=games:tools&package=godot3)

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm just so happy the Godot is at the top of HN.

</comment><comment><USER52> Still waiting for it…

<comment><USER53> For those who don't get the reference : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot) :)

<comment><USER54> Any good/recommended performances available online?

Allways heard about the play, but never saw it.

<comment><USER55> Try [https://youtu.be/izX5dIzI2RE](https://youtu.be/izX5dIzI2RE)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I follow Godot since it got open sourced some years ago - great project.

What scripting language beside visual scripting does it support? Lua? Squirrel? or only C++? (I saw some screenshots there: [https://godotengine.org/features](https://godotengine.org/features) )

<comment><USER57> Currently, not including the upcoming 3.0 release, it's their own flavor called GDScript. [http://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/about/faq.html](http://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/about/faq.html) [http://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/learning/scripting/gds...](http://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/learning/scripting/gdscript/gdscript_basics.html#doc- gdscript)

Edit: it's worth noting some of the hard stances they have in that faq have changed since then. 3.0 (coming soon) has C# support.

<comment><USER26> Their stances haven't really changed, they introduced GDNative which is a system that loads shared libraries using a C API, which has made it easy to add and use any language (I'm guessing the original idea was to make using C++ in your game easier). Some guy made C# bindings with GDNative, so they're making it optional with the release. There's other languages you can use as well. GDScript is still the 'main' scripting language.

<comment><USER58> That's plain wrong. C# bindings have nothing to do with GDNative, it's a module on it's own, integrated pretty well and unlike things that can be bound through GDNative, Mono module will be a part of Godot itself.

[https://github.com/neikeq/GodotSharp](https://github.com/neikeq/GodotSharp)

<comment><USER26> My bad, there was a bit about C# in their article about GDScript on their website, read it wrong. You're right, took a peek at the code, it's a regular module.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> First game title in the showcase contains obscene language (in Russian). Not very pleasant to see.

<comment><USER28> Not the one who downvoted you, but if you understand what's written there have you considered letting them know? (email, github or maybe twitter)

<comment><USER58> References on the name

[https://godotengine.org/article/godot-history- images](https://godotengine.org/article/godot-history-images) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot)

> In fact, Godot was just a code-name for what would be something else, a more > general purpose engine with a proper UI instead of a set of assorted tools. > We knew it would take a long time, so we used a name based on a play by > Samuel Becket to represent that feeling. Eventually the name would change to > something with a connection to our home country, Argentina.

<comment><USER28> He was referring to one of the showcased games on their website.

<comment><USER58> Ah, missed that, thanks</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Don't We Have Pay Toilets in America? (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://psmag.com/economics/dont-pay-toilets-america-bathroom-restroom-free-market-90683 <comment><USER2> just an anecdote, but they're all over Portland. Just about every restaurant or coffee shop near any main urban thoroughfare has them. The shop owners will often refund the quarter for customers, but they do exist.

It's the private business owners (unethical..) way of dealing with a fairly huge homeless problem.

It's not just small places, either. A Target I happened upon had such coin devices on the bathroom door.

another anecdote : i've never witnessed as much (illegal) public urination in one spot. I watched a homeless man piss on a glass window with two indoor female onlookers at a Starbucks that was about 4 blocks from the convention center PyCon was being held at.

The absurdity of the act made me crack up, but I can't help but wonder, then and now, whether or not such absurd grotesque behavior is fueled partially by things like pay-bathrooms.</comment>


Have I been Pwned? - <AUTHOR> https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites <comment><USER2> Currently using FastMail and a new alias and name for virtually everything I sign up for. Need UK based anonymous / one-time CC for the next step.

<comment><USER3> Any pointers for EU based one-time CC are also appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On the one hand, this kind of site is incredibly useful and interesting. On the other, I feel like it would make a wonderful vector for collecting possible metadata to match with login credentials when trying to use said hacked credentials.

<comment><USER5> relevant xkcd [https://xkcd.com/792/](https://xkcd.com/792/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> email@example.com has been pwned a lot ;)</comment>


Why I ditched the press release… and what I do instead - <AUTHOR> http://andreeaayers.com/why-i-ditched-the-press-release-and-what-i-do-instead/

<comment><USER2> The work that Andreea did is what your PR firm is supposed to do for you. Craft a pitch, identify targets, etc, etc. The el-cheapo PR distribution outfits are, as she found out, pretty much worthless.</comment>


The truth about cold water - <AUTHOR> http://gcaptain.com/maritime/blog/cold_water?11198

<comment><USER3> There's an Icelandic legend that beat all this crap in 1984. His ship sank with all his friends and co-workers. He swam to shore, walked bare feet on razor sharp lava and walked to town. Guðlaugur Friðþórsson.

His descriptions are chilling. "When the ship sank from underneath us and we were submerged for the second time we decided [the three of us] to swim. We decided not to help each other which would have been hopeless. We spotted the lighthouse and started swimming towards it. Soon there was only the two of us left calling between us, but soon enough I stopped hearing any calls."

More amazingness: On his way to shore a ship came within 100m of him. He spoke to "múkki" an imagined sailor's friend on the way, told himself jokes and said some prayers. When he came to shore he had to hold onto a rock wall while waiting for the tide to recede. While walking he spotted a bathtub used for lifestock feeding he punched through a layer of ice to get drinking water.

<comment><USER4> Apparently he survived because he was fat.

[http://books.google.com.au/books?id=rYIJJP7audkC&pg=PA26...](http://books.google.com.au/books?id=rYIJJP7audkC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=gudlaugur+fridthorsson&source=bl&ots=vaeOLOEykf&sig=cPCPEvKE3pD4hPNM4DAXH0GrmJM&hl=en&ei=BxA3TKSBLI- lOL2IoMEE&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDEQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=gudlaugur%20fridthorsson&f=false)

<comment><USER5> I can't find a citation for this now, but I recall reading somewhere that he had a higher ratio of brown fat than is normal. I.e. just being fat isn't enough, it has to be the right sort of fat.

<comment><USER6> <http://www.vikingrune.com/2009/03/true-viking-grit/>

_However, a startling fact was discovered by the researchers from the University of Iceland: Guðlaugur's fat is almost like seal fat. It is more solid and two or three times thicker than human fat._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A very good article that shows some perceived misconceptions about cold water survival. I spent 4 years on 20 different large marine seismic exploration boats with most of them operating in the North Sea. I have taken 3 North Sea Survival courses and a many safety meetings for good measure. Every person that I have worked with has been well aware of the consequences of falling overboard in water barely above freezing. Larger boats take at least an hour to turn around and at least 10-15 min for the rescue boat to hit the water. Then, only if your lucky, will they be able to find you as you bob in and out of view from the waves. All of this of course, relies on someone seeing you fall over in the first place. Never work on deck unless you are working with someone, have an immersion suit, or are attached by a safety chain.

Another problem arises when you are rescued as he points out, but the stories I have heard are about the survivors being put in showers to raise their body temperature back up and collapsing and drowning in a puddle of water in the shower.

The whole thing, on the other hand, seems fairly moot. It's like telling someone that when you get shot, it's not the bullet that kills you, it's the bleeding.

<comment><USER8> I particularly like the tone in "I know that you think you know all there is to know about hypothermia already (and maybe you do), but read ahead and see if you aren't surprised by something" given that someone actually downvoted me when I took exception to the line "whatever you just said, it's wrong" in the "Where Does A Tree Get Its Mass?" article[1] when it was posted to HN.

There is no need for all the hyperbole and Zed Shaw-like drama on HN, articles can be interestingly written without all that baggage. That someone such as yourself, who knows a lot about this, and someone like me who doesn't can both enjoy the article is a testament to the style.

[1][http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/11/where_does_a_tree_get...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/11/where_does_a_tree_get_its_mass.html)

<comment><USER9> You should have read on; it was just an attention grabber :)

<comment><USER8> I don't want to offend anyone but that article was extremely boring (I did end up reading it). I suppose I'd seen the Richard Feynman video on fire and trees quite recently beforehand and was in an intolerant mood. But it's impossible to stay in any kind of negative mood if you watch Feynman, his love of knowledge is just infectious.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1pIYI5JQLE>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A great rule of thumb I learned in Wilderness First Responder training: "1 minute, 10 minutes, an hour"

It's catchy and easy to remember, and it means: * 1 minute to deal with the panic response (i.e. first keep yourself alive for the first minute, you have plenty of time, and lots of people die quickly because of panic and inhalation.

* 10 minutes - that is roughly the amount of time you have to get yourself in a stable position before you lose motor control. Get yourself in a position with your head out of the water that doesnt require active support anyway you can - flotation, freezing yourself to an ice shelf, etc).

* 1 hour - that's how long you'll live (roughly) in 32F water. You may have a lot longer depending on water temp and your body.

There's a prof that did a lot of this research on his poor grad students (and you thought your thesis advisor was hard on you!). [http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/kinrec/research/people/gie...](http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/kinrec/research/people/giesbrecht.html) He's the source for much of the recent research.

</comment><comment><USER11> Much of the knowledge we have about the effect of cold water on the human body comes from the Nazi's human experiments.

[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/naziexp....](http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/naziexp.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if people who have training with cold water resist significantly longer. I knew Finns who would go in mid January to swim for ten minutes in a hole cut in the ice of a frozen lake, then sit around for a while, dress up and go on with their day. And that was without sauna.

<comment><USER13> Lynne Cox, the only person to have swum a mile in Antarctic waters and to swim the Bering Strait.

"Dangerous marine animals aside, the [Gulf of 'Aqaba] swim was among Cox's most physically challenging. A battery of scientific studies done on Cox over the years has revealed some startling facts about her physiology. First, the muscle and fat in her body are so perfectly balanced that she has neutral buoyancy, meaning that she neither sinks in water nor floats. As one researcher told her, "You're at one with the water" - a critical energy-saving advantage during long-distance swims.

More remarkable, however, was the discovery that Cox's body is superbly adapted to cold temperatures. On entering cold water, a person's surface blood vessels constrict, forcing warm blood to the vital organs at the body's core. Normally, however, this is a stopgap that works for only a short time. By contrast, Cox's vital organs are insulated by an evenly distributed layer of insulating fat. Warm blood shunted to her core remains warm dramatically longer. So effective is this "internal wet suit," that Cox's temperature actually rises during a hard swim in cold water."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynne_Cox>

<comment><USER14> But apparently she had been swimming for decades -- a lot of it in (progressively colder?) ocean water -- and she was studied "over the years." So it seems pretty possible that her physiological adaptations were a result of, not a cause of, all that cold-water swimming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A good complement to the recent drowning-related post. In fact, it's the "prequel". Worth a read, followed by a warm bath.

<comment><USER16> Indeed. Why does HN suddenly want to make me a lifeguard?

<comment><USER17> Because the media wants to make you an idiot where drowning and cold water are concerned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The video _Cold Water Boot Camp_ linked to at the end of the article strikes home the points very nicely.

Volunteers jump into cold water and demonstrate the _1-10-1_ rule of cold water exposure.

      1  : Initial cold shock will last for about a minute
      10 : Physical incapacitation will occur after about 10 minutes
      1  : Unconsciousness from hypothermia in about 1 hour

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1xohI3B4Uc>

</comment><comment><USER19> The author, USCG Rescue Swimmer Mario Vittone, is a nut. He once submerged himself in Lake Erie in the middle of winter to prove that it takes about an hour for your body to reach hypothermic levels.

After he did it I asked him "How did it go?"

He replied. "I survived, but it was close!"

<comment><USER20> Reminds me of Dr Popsicle: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH29uzBvR1s>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So the advice to survive in cold water:

wear a life jacket?

<comment><USER22> Absolutely (though it may not be enough), but not just for the reasons you think: a life jacket will keep the back of your head out of the water - <USER2> will help prevent damage to the brain.

You don't want to know where this research comes from, believe me.

<comment><USER23> Maybe he doesn't want to know, but I'm curious.

P.S. I'm also curious about what kind of damage can occur to the brain and from what exactly?

<comment><USER24> I believe he's referring to this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation>

Much of that has been confirmed more recently by somewhat more humane (and more than somewhat more voluntary) experimentation by folks like Gordon Geisbrecht (U of Manitoba) and the Canadian Defence and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine (DCIEM).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You have to watch this TED talk where Lewis Pugh swam in the North Pole. It's fascinating. [http://www.ted.com/talks/lewis_pugh_swims_the_north_pole.htm...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lewis_pugh_swims_the_north_pole.html)</comment>


Browser Ball - Possibly More Cool Than You Think It Will Be - <AUTHOR> http://experiments.instrum3nt.com/markmahoney/ball/

<comment><USER2> I can't fathom any use for this, but it looks incredibly cool.

I can intuitively grasp what the code must look like - detecting window size and positioning - but it still looks impressive once it's implemented.</comment>


Interview training videos for underserved people in tech - <AUTHOR> http://thetarah.com/2013/07/15/free-interview-training-videos-for-underserved-people-in-tech/

<comment><USER2> I had to read the title multiple times before I stopped seeing "undeserved."

<comment><USER3> It's for women in tech, mostly, with a focus on helping anyone get jobs in tech. It's really high quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm happy to answer questions about this. I'm Tarah Wheeler Van Vlack.</comment>


IOS 5.0.1 lets developers to specify files that should remain on device - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2011/11/02/apple-posts-ios-5-0-1-beta-for-developers/ <comment><AUTHOR> Previous discussion on "Cleaning" <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3108563>

</comment><comment><USER2> When's Heroku going to let developers do the same thing?

<comment><USER3> I can't see that happening, and I can't see why it would happen either.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Find and Report Bed Bugs in North America - <AUTHOR> http://bedbuglookup.com

<comment><USER2> It looks like you scraped a bunch of data from my website (bedbugregistry.com) and put a different UI on it. That's pretty lame.

There are lots of worthy projects around bedbug tracking that you could do, particularly if you want to focus on specific cities. But please do the work yourself, and use your own data.

<comment><USER3> Okay, as someone who doesn't know anything about both sites, a casual test (surveying results for Toronto, ON) does not suggest any data was lifted off your site. In fact, there is just one entry for all of Toronto on Bedbug Registry, whereas Bedbug Lookup seems to have dozens.

Of course it's possible that your search simply doesn't work, there _are_ copious error messages on Bedbug Registry... Can you give more details about what you think was scraped from you?

At most BedbugLookup seems to be a superset of your site data.

Edit: seems the search on BBR is not working for me (and apparently _for me only_ ). Thanks for providing the links, I see that the data was indeed scraped. Not cool.

<comment><USER2> For example, all of the reports on this first page of Toronto results are from my site: [http://bedbuglookup.com/toronto-on](http://bedbuglookup.com/toronto- on)

Ditto for Vancouver and NYC. I stopped looking after that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is needed, because the bedbugregistry seems abandoned and has submission errors where you can't add new entries to some addresses.

One problem is legal backlash, I would have hosted this overseas like the bedbugregistry did to prevent takedown notices and lawsuits.

This is helpful when dealing with lying landlords who claim there was never a problem until you moved in, so it must be something you did and refuse to pay for treatment, refund damage deposits and generally screw you over. Then you go on one of these bug registry sites and discover they've had bedbug infestations for years.

<comment><USER2> The Bedbug Registry is hosted here in sunny California. I don't hide from lawsuits.

<comment><USER4> I thought it was run out of Romania [http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/09/urban.pests/](http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/09/urban.pests/)

<comment><USER2> I was living in Romania when that article came out, but the site is hosted in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As far as I can tell the bed bug claims and identities of the reporters are not independently verified. I have an incentive to false-report on a property I myself hope to subsequently rent or purchase in order to reduce the price I pay. How do you deal with my fraudulent reporting?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm planning on implementing accounts for building managers/landlords with the power to flag and remove comments under certain restrictions.

I actually have most of the backend for this already complete but I was waiting to see how useful people thought this would be. Apparently very!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a small project I'd started a couple months ago to help myself find and report bed bugs when apartment hunting. All of the other websites that are similar to this are either broken (don't allow you to submit new reports), or are confusing to navigate.

I'm starting with 17 cities in North America.

<comment><USER6> [http://bedbugregistry.com](http://bedbugregistry.com) is pretty easy to navigate and it's been around for almost 10 years. In fact, it looks like you're pulling the same data from there as well. Is that legal?

<comment><AUTHOR> For a lot of cities, that website is actually quite broken: you can't submit new addresses or reports.

In Vancouver, BC (where I'm from) you haven't been able to submit new reports for 2+ years unless you're using their iOS app. A majority of the website is outdated and I wanted to make a resource to fix that problem.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure that makes it OK to scrape and re-host their data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is open to abuse and resulting legal backlash from affected properties. What is it that prevents me from submitting a bug report for a W hotel?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there! I actually thought about this quite a bit, and I can see how that would be a big issue, especially for property owners.

In the next while I'm going to implement accounts for building managers to be able to flag and remove comments under certain restrictions. I'm hoping this provides people with an easy way to remove fraudulent claims.

<comment><USER9> The property owners dont have time and dont want anything to do with your site. In fact, they are probably oblivious to your site's existence. How are you going to prevent harming properties' reputation without any involvement from the properties? Because, one way or another, their reputation is at risk through your site.

You should look into how tripadvisor deals with hotels. I believe there's been lawsuits, but the tripadvisor is powerful.

<comment><USER10> By the time the site gets big enough to make a dent in the properties' reputations, that will also be around the time property owners start hearing about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you only started this in 2014 then how do you have reports dating from 2012 and 2013 (and earlier too?)?

<comment><USER2> One weird trick for filling your website with bedbug reports... you won't believe what happened next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool, I actually thought about doing the same thing after I saw how out of date bedbugregistry.com was.

Hope you have some good SEO implementation as I believe people typing in prospective apartment addresses is probably the biggest lead for traffic.

</comment><comment><USER13> One problem -- Many Airbnb's don't list the actual address until the transaction is processed. Maybe you could include airbnb 'listings' \-- but i guess the host could just change the listing ... something to think about.

</comment><comment><USER14> Any name and shame sites do not last due to the overload of fake reviews and opinions. The only way is to verify that they stayed there, like what airbnb does or other hoteling and hosteling site do.

</comment><comment><USER15> The design is great, did you do all of the design/front-end work on your own?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I appreciate it! (:

Yup, I did the entire website, front and backend.</comment></comment>


By 2012 Koreans Will Get 1Gbps Broadband Connections - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2009/02/01/by-2012-koreans-will-get-a-gigabit-per-second-broadband-connection/ <comment><USER2> Not to defend the US but an interesting way to look at the broadband problem:

South Korea: total road network: 102,062 km, Population: 48,379,392 ~475 people per km of road. GDP - per capita: $27,100 (2008 est.)

Japan: total road network: 1,196,999 km Population: 127,288,416 ~106 people per km of road. GDP - per capita: $35,300

United States: total road network: 6,433,272km (2004); Population: 303,824,640 ~47 people per km of road. GDP - per capita: $48,000

Data from: <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/>

PS: I still think our network is pathetic.

<comment><USER3> from your data, it seems that the denser the road is, the lower the GDP is

but of course, only 3 data points, past data don't ensure future and it's only correlation, not causation

<comment><USER4> I think it's more about the correlation between population density and the issue of "last mile" in the broadband network. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile>

<comment><USER5> I there is also a content-density issue.

Japanese and Korean Internet users will access a lot of local content... Places like Germany will access a moderate amount of local content.... Places like Australia will be largely accessing foreign content.

So Internet is bound to be more expensive in Australia. The last mile is expensive for density reasons, and most of this traffic needs to be trucked over large inter-continental cables. In high-pop, high-local-content areas the costs are bound to be considerably less.

The US is an anomaly - but they are probably in a unique circumstance where they also serve/transport a lot of foreign content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Japan already has 1Gbps: [http://www.japantoday.com/category/technology/view/kddi- to-l...](http://www.japantoday.com/category/technology/view/kddi-to- launch-1gbps-fiber-optic-service-in-oct)

<comment><USER7> And only $65/month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Availability of such high-speed connections has allowed Korea to emerge as a leader in the MMO and online gaming industries."

What came first, the faster Internet connections (chicken), or the emergence as a leader in the MMO and online gaming industries (egg)?

I've always been under the impression that the popularity of gaming (everything from Starcraft to CS to MMOs) in Korea has helped drive faster and faster Internet connections in Korea. If there's any reliable evidence to suggest either way, I'd love to hear it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I love how 3 year plans are always in their first year.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would like US internet to at least be somewhat comparable in major cities such as Los Angeles, Bay Area, New York, Chicago, etc. Overall, the monopoly that the current networks have has forced our networking into an embarrassing state.</comment>


Solving the Problem of Enterprise Software Customizations - <AUTHOR> http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/3890/Solving-the-Problem-of-Enterprise-Software-Customizations.aspx <comment><USER2> OK, I can see that this post suggests a "solution" that solves some of the problems faced by the main development team although I suspect that it does not really solve the issue of having to meet the needs of a specific corporate customer at a specfied date - it just translates feature requests into API enhancement requests.

Plus almost nothing solves the problem of long term complexity where new enhancements (or bug fixes) break existing functionality that is effectively unknown to the development team. If you don't know what your customers are dong with your software then you can't protect their subset of the software functionality.</comment>


Startup America: To Celebrate, Inspire And Accelerate Entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/31/startup-america-a-campaign-to-celebrate-inspire-and-accelerate-entrepreneurship/

<comment><USER2> Fantastic. I'd love to see Canada do something like this.

Is anyone aware of municipalities that already do this sort of thing at a city-wide level? Any that come to mind as doing it particularly well? I live in a city that is desperately trying to reinvent itself (Hamilton, Ontario) and I'm curious about these sorts of programs and their successes (and failures).

</comment><comment><USER3> Its too bad the matching funds aren't available to the companies themselves and not just the investors. It would be great to be able to double your investment round with a government matching grant.</comment>


Boundless Informant NSA data-mining tool – four key slides - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/08/nsa-boundless-informant-data-mining-slides

<comment><USER2> Stack is: Java/Hadoop/Tomcat/cloudbase using Machineshop([http://machineshop.io](http://machineshop.io) ?) data input is protobuf/queries are translated to a map/reduce job by cloudbase Client uses Ext GWT (Java Component UI Library for Google Web Toolkit |) cloud based, not sure which cloud. Docs aren't clear if machineshop hosts the actual data..wow</comment>


Building Twitter bootstrap - <AUTHOR> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/building-twitter-bootstrap/

<comment><USER2> Twitter Bottstrap is the single greatest thing to happen to my web dev abilities. I now go from start to shipped in under 3 days on most ideas, whereas before it would take 2 days for dev, then 2 weeks for design that I could never get right.

A big thank you to all who worked on it!

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been using Zurb Foundation for a recent contracting gig, and am pretty happy with it. Can anyone who is more into these things compare it, in a thoughtful way, to Twitter Bootstrap?

<comment><USER4> I find foundation great for rapid prototyping, I can build a mockup in foundation in a few minutes and then iteratively improve on the design until it becomes a real product, as the name implies it's really a foundation to build on, it doesn't give you _everything_ but it gives you 90% of what you need in a way that isn't restrictive.

Bootstrap gives you a lot more than foundation does, but I find it very restrictive, it's hard to make a bootstrap site not look like bootstrap (if anyone can point me to some counter examples I'd be interested). This is unsurprising since bootstrap was designed by twitter for a consistent look across their internal tools.

So my verdict is, for internal tools / quick hacks, use bootstrap. For mockups and real products, use foundation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Preview of v2.0 here: <http://bootstrap.io/Demo/>

<comment><USER6> Thanks! I wanted to see v2.0 demo but could not find any link before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One weak point I see in bootstrap is that you'll get somewhat of a default look, similar to default/common blog themes. It would be great if there were some kind of "bootstrap mixin" that quickly changes a few of the colors and other CSS options to create a slightly different experience. Nothing really major, which is why I'd be reluctant calling it a theme (i.e. more like "Bootstrap Hot Dog Stand" than "Bootstrap Themeforest").

<comment><USER8> someone posted a simple bootstrap generator a few days ago here on hn : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3461651>

<comment><USER9> The problem with bootstrap is only a small portion of it's design aspects can be changed. This is a problem with the way they've (not) used LESS. The only variables are colors and the font. Options for sizes, spacing, some layout options how you want to the topbar to work are all much more limited and harder to do. So for the most part aside from color, if you are using bootstrap it's going to look like a bootstrap site.

This is fairly different from say Blueprint/Compass where almost anything can be tweaked just with SASS varaibles.

<comment><USER10> But the whole point of Bootstrap is for _non_ designers to be able to make decent looking sites with minimal effort. Give them control over things like spacing and font sizes, and most of them will get it very, very, wrong.

<comment><USER7> Well, the grid system of bootstrap could be used for a lot of wrongness, but by then you'd be avoiding most of its base system anyway and could do the same amount of damage with any kind of simple CSS grid.

I'd go a step farther and say that even the little bits you can change are prone to abuse and/or simple hard to get right for a number of non-designers. The generator system above actually just fills in some blanks, which isn't exactly the difficult part for programmers. It's what you fill in those values… My idea for some part of "custom" generator would be selecting a palette from a reasonable large number and then probably some basic font types and weights, similar to type-a-file[1]. Then add some customized icon set[2][3], and you've got something that's at least a bit more unique.

1: <http://www.type-a-file.com/>

2: <http://iconza.com/>

3: <http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/?content=102435>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very nice. This does make life easier for those who have limited front-end experience (aka me). Here some others that I find useful:

<http://960.gs/>

<http://sass-lang.com/>

<http://www.blueprintcss.org/>

<comment><USER12> As the links above are probably intended for someone who hasn't yet come across a CSS framework, I'll post the following comment.

Using Blueprint CSS (and probably 960.gs too) feels like going back to table- based layouts. You set up columns, and extra wrapper divs. I don't know if it's a help or a hindrance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm far, far from being a "front end" coder. So I can't comment on if this produces good HTML. If however it allows me to get something up quickly without having to become a "front-end" coder, then it's going to be very useful for me.

<comment><USER14> Incidentally, it doesn't "produce" any markup. There are form generators for at least Rails available, but generally you do whatever to get the markup to conform to their expected structure.

That being said my experience is heavy on the forms portion of their styling, and there is an extraneous div.input wrapped around each element, but you'd often do something like that on your own anyhow.

Generally: Good Stuff

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I simply love it for quickly prototyping and get it up and running.

</comment><comment><USER16> Bootstrap - spreading DIVitis to the masses and placing layout into HTML everywhere. We might just as well go back to tables for layout.

<comment><USER17> I've listened to the debate about this for ages, taking everything on faith. From what I've learned, you _can't_ truly separate layout and HTML. The best you can do is make it so minor layout changes will require only changes to the CSS. Big layout changes always seem to require changes to the HTML. People cite ZenGarden as an example of major changes with just CSS, but their markup is full of more id's and classes than would be reasonable for an everyday site. And people spend a _long_ time tweaking to get stuff to work across browsers.

So I completely agree that using this (and most other CSS frameworks) is going backwards a bit in mixing layout with HTML. But I actually always did that. I just wish writers on the subject would help me not be confused by starting out by admitting that they are not following the notion of layout done in CSS.

Some people posted on here that Bootstrap is just for getting quick prototypes done, and then when things are stabilized, you should switch over to semantic, properly separated CSS. But if so, is that the intentions for _all_ grid based CSS frameworks?

<comment><USER18> The intention of CSS grid frameworks certainly was at one time limited to rapid prototyping, but I'm seeing more and more sites deployed with default grid classes and CSS intact.

Using divs with classes of row, column, span_X, grid_x, et al. is, from a semantic standpoint, no better than using tables. And Bootstrap's CSS file is nearly 2500 lines, unminified with a 47K minified file size. That's a lot of overhead if you only need grid, typography and pretty forms.

It makes a lot of sense to keep the full CSS file linked while iterating the design/layout, but once it's in production, the grid classes can be replaced with semantic names and the extraneous styles removed. Here's an article I found on the 960gs homepage that covers not only combining/renaming classes, but also minimizing the amount of extraneous container divs: [http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/03/fight-div-itis- and-c...](http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/03/fight-div-itis-and-class- itis-with-the-960-grid-system/)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best state to form a single member LLC - <AUTHOR> I currently have a single member California LLC (disregarded entity). I am sick and tired of paying the flat $800 a year fee and $20 every other year statement of information fee. Not to mention their processes are still mostly all mail in, with very limited online capabilities.<p>What state is most friendly for single member LLC's? Also, do you have to live in that state? <comment><USER2> Since the cost is your main issue: you don't need LLC. You can register a name as DBA, no hassle, no fees.

The most common reason people give for LLC is that it shields you from personal liability so that if you get sued, it's your company that goes bankrupt, not you. Personally I consider that a scare tactic as in: I've yet have to read a single story of a small software business where that actually happened.

<comment><USER3> Small software businesses get sued all the time. Those types of lawsuits don't usually get big headlines. So, that's why you don't typically read stories about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are you doing business in California? If so, you're going to pay the California franchise tax anyway. So, might as well stay as a California LLC.

<comment><AUTHOR> If all the business is web based (customers all over the world), what is considering doing business in California? Is it based off residence? I don't have an office.

I'm currently in San Francisco, but looking to move out of state to somewhere that is not the People's Republic of California.

<comment><USER3> Until you move, you're doing business in California. Once you move, that'll be a different story.

My guess is you're not going to move to a state based on the minimum corporate tax rate :) So, once you move, it'll be easier to make recommendations as to which state is best for your LLC.

Until then, I'm sorry to say you're stuck with the California franchise tax...</comment></comment></comment>


BOXY isometric projection ~How big is it? (svg) - <AUTHOR> http://www.toffeemilkshake.co.uk/boxy/ <comment><USER2> It would be awesome if you could choose from a list of comparison objects.

Edit: Also what is the reference object? A baseball?</comment>


Ask HK: Resume writing/editing services: Which one do you suggest? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, in the process of refreshing my resume and wondering if i should go with a professional service. Anybody want to share their experiences with such service ? <comment><USER2> academicediting.us or email@example.com

Just email them your paper and they'll get you back a quotation pretty quick.

I asked them to do mine and they did a great job, its an academic editing company, but they did a really good job on mine.</comment>


BioRender – Professional Science Figures - <AUTHOR> https://biorender.com/ <comment><USER2> How times a' changing.

Just few years ago this would've shipped as a standalone desktop software that would've cost a one-time fee in low hundreds at most, but more likely under a $100. This is after all a vector editor with specialized clip art library.

This BioRender thing apparently costs over 400 _per year_ at its cheapest. I realize that this obviously means that there's a demand even at these terms, but that's just... disconcerting to see for some reason. It's one of the cases when conversion from an installable product to an online service is done merely to justify recurrent monthly charges rather than for any actual user benefits.

<comment><USER3> Why is this being down-voted?

It is a clip art application with a monthly subscription cost. It seems like a pretty on-the-mark comment.

<comment><USER4> They designed 20,000 specialized vector graphic icons. Do you think it's quick and/or cheap to do that?

<comment><USER5> It's not. But it's entirely orthogonal to this being an application vs. a Service as a Software Substitute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great product! But I almost quit your signup process. Forcing me to answer survey questions about my field and give my company name before I can see what your software can do makes me not want to sign up.

</comment><comment><USER7> This makes me feel sad. Biology textbooks are full of these kinds of diagrams, and my impression from dealing with people who came up through normal biology training is that they are a hindrance to learning to think about biological systems in two ways:

1\. They give the impression of a mechanical system like you might make out of an erector set as opposed to the chaotic, roiling mass that is the interior of a cell.

2\. They prevent students from learning to think in terms of relations among observed quantities without overspecifying them.

<comment><USER8> On the other hand, biology is so complicated that you have to simplify things down to abstractions that let you communicate and reason about causal stories, and that's what these sorts of figures are good for.

<comment><USER9> Completely agree, but the clip-art approach doesn't help - it's often easier to understand casual relationships in terms of colored dots for partitions or very basic parameterization like node size in a graph, than to with clip art of tiny livers or brains.

Many of the more successful abstractions seem like they would make for extremely fun games. I've seen a few _Fantastic Voyage!_ bio-themed videogames but they are usually either stupid memory games designed to teach technical terms, recycled space invader games with bacteria clip art, or simulations like FoldIt that are fun puzzles but don't really capture the dynamism and system behaviors that make biology so interesting.

If you'll forgive me venting my spleen, I really really want a game that lets me run the immune system. I don't need it to look like the inside of a bio textbook, I need it to model the information-production-distribution-processes and their strong resemblance to dynamic wargaming.

<comment><USER10> +1 would like to see this game too.

As a medical student, however, I can vouch for the utility of clip art in visualisation. You get delivered so much visual information that if there is coherence to it, you have more chance of processing it correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is amazing - I wish I had this a few weeks ago when I was making a presentation. Does anyone know if images made when on a paid plan would be usable for commercial/publication purposes forever? Or is is only licensed for as long as you have a subscription? I tried to find that on the website but I might just have been missing something obvious, or maybe theres some usual legal standard about how this sort of IP licensing is done by default?

<comment> d-sc It's in their TOS. The answer is more or less forever:

"Standard Commercial License: A BioRender Standard Commercial License is provided to all paid industry accounts allows you to use our Asset(s) anywhere in the world, and the license never expires.

You may use the Asset(s) in websites, print, presentations, publications, social media sites, marketing and advertising material, broadcasts, and for internal communication. However, you may not share or distribute the Asset(s) in any way that would let others use the Asset(s) without licensing it themselves."

<comment><USER11> So we wouldn't be able to photo ship in a diagram into a bigger diagram later and would need to make it not downloadable if we post diagrams on our website? What if someone screenshots it from a journal publication?

<comment><USER12> If I had to guess, I'd say the intent behind it was "don't produce content which you then license out for re-use by third parties", not "you must make it physically impossible for third parties to re-use the content, even if they're willing to infringe copyright".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Have these people ever seen an actin filament?! This is an outrage!

[https://biorender.com/icon/cell-structures/cytoskeleton- and-...](https://biorender.com/icon/cell-structures/cytoskeleton-and- ecm/actin-simplified-5/)

<comment><USER14> That's Actin (simplified 5). Try Actin (filament):

[https://biorender.com/icon/cell-structures/cytoskeleton- and-...](https://biorender.com/icon/cell-structures/cytoskeleton-and- ecm/actin-filament/)

<comment><USER13> That's a good picture for the ultrastructure nerds.

But as a reformed cell nerd, my beef with the diagram i linked to is that the structure is wiggly, implying that it is slack and flexible. Actin isn't. Whenever you see actin filaments in a cell, they're part of a structure that is either under tension, and so is made of long straight bits, or compression, and so is lots of short straight bits anchored to something.

EDIT Here is a lovely picture showing the actin in cancer cells growing on a glass slide:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_can...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Actin_Filaments_in_a_Cultured_Cell)

The actin next to the slide is red, and the actin on the top of the cell is purple. Around the edge, you have filopodia and lamellipodia, small compression structures poking outward from the cell. In the left half, you have stress fibres, tension structures anchored in adhesions on the bottom of the cell, concentrated near the edge, and reaching up into the cell body. I'm not certain what the little scribbles making up the crown on the cell's head (around the purple blob) are, but i think they're little flaps sticking up out of the cell which are involved in pinocyosis - compression structures like the lamellipodia. Bottom-rightward of the purple blob you can see a cell-cell junction, a sort of vague line with perpendicular stress fibres terminating in it. The little dots are probably associated with vesicles (not sure if those are in tension or compression, actually).

<comment><USER15> Aren't you conflating actin (a protein) with actin filaments (a polymer/superstructure made up of many individual actin units)?

<comment><USER13> I'm talking about actin structures. I believe the icon i linked to is intended to depict an actin structure. If it's intended to depict a single molecule of actin, it's even worse!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> if i still worked in the lab, i'd be all over this product, even if it's pricey.

everyone has had to sit through powerpoint presentations with terrible clip art where a well-meaning colleague tries to explain their new hypothesis and is constantly stymied by not having fruitful visual aids. and let me tell you from experience, you feel just as bad when you're the one making the presentation.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice! Are there any open source or cheaper alternatives to these? At $39 a month, this is more expensive than Microsoft Office! For students, that is almost impossible to cough up for intermittent usage.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you are looking for something free that is specifically for pathways, I worked on a project called PathWhiz ([http://smpdb.ca/pathwhiz](http://smpdb.ca/pathwhiz)) that might fit the bill. It also has the advantage of structuring the data into BioPax/SBML.

</comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone else get the feeling that there is a tacit assumption that clip art is frowned upon when making figures? Coming from a neuroscience background, most papers I have seen have diagrams specifically designed for said paper.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm all for this being relatively expensive if it gives them the wherewithal to invest in transitioning to these diagrams being semantic and eventually drive simulation models.

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks great. Too many questions on signup -- I fell out of the funnel.

</comment><comment><USER8> Was this built on some underlying web-based vector graphics editing library, or did they build the whole app from scratch?

</comment><comment><USER22> Super cool.

The pricing seems a little bit low to me. Considering the target customer and the quality of the competition, I suspect you could charge more.

That being said, I could see how this may be deliberate and you have ambitions of addition upsell or consulting revenue.

Just point this out because it's a personal weakness of mine to not price my offerings high enough, even when it's obviously underpriced to outside observers.

</comment><comment><USER23> Awesome product!</comment>


A simplistic proposal for patent reform - <AUTHOR>

If your patent ever gets overturned in the future then you will have to pay back all the fees that you have collected under your patent + a 50% fine.
The reason why I think this would work is because it puts the onus of really good prior art searches on the patent taker.
Now it is basically 'whatever you got away with', and if your patent gets voided after years of litigation there is no retroactive punishment for patenting something non-novel in the first place.
So there is lots of sloppy searching and lots of blustering with bogus patents.
If that change were adopted you'd gladly pay for a bogus patent because you'd get it back with a nice interest after you finish killing the patent. <comment><USER2> This is an intriguing approach but you need to watch out for unintended consequences.

If patent licensing carries with it x risk in addition to the benefits, and suddenly that risk becomes 2x or 5x or 10x (depending on how one quantifies the risk of forfeiture of the cumulative royalties, plus associated penalty), I would think this have an adverse effect on the patent licensing market in causing the licensing parties to increase the royalty rates to help offset the heightened risks.

Don't know how this might affect the troll market for licensing but it might have this unintended impact on legitimate licensing deals of all types (ones that have nothing to do with the dubious patents found at the margins).

<comment><AUTHOR> I said it was simplistic :)

Think of this as a step in 'release early, release often', first approximation of something that with a lot of pushing and pulling might be used as a step towards a healthier set of tools around intellectual property.

I share your concerns regarding the actuarial effects of this, but the funny bit is if the licensing costs would be raised on the 'solid' patents then those patents would find no takers.

After all patents are to be granted for a reasonable fee, if that fee were to be exorbitantly high then you could make a good case against the licensor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Related: I think that for software patents (if allowed at all) source code, build scripts, and a comprehensive test suite demonstrating functionality must be provided. This must be done in a non-obfuscated way, such that the patent officer(s) assigned to the patent application can build and demo the software.</comment>


Bitsavers' Software Archive - <AUTHOR> http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/bits/ <comment><USER2> This is a mirror (one of a few) of Al Kossow's bitsavers.org website. It looks like bitsavers.org redirects to a mirror because Al's server doesn't have the bandwidth to put up with direct access.

The contents of the dump are all Al's choice. Much of it he has collected himself, but if you send him PDFs or software dumps and he thinks it is a fit, he'll add it. I don't believe he intends for it to be a clearing house of every possible document or bit of software. It started mostly as scans of mainframe documents, but over the years the scope has crept wider.

Al has spent many years (> 15?) collecting all that stuff, and a few years ago he was hired by the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool. What are the prerequisites for software to appear here? In Borland/DOS there is only Turbo Basic and Turbo Lightning but Borland did release early versions of Turbo C and Turbo Pascal as a museum like release. There's also the Borland C++ 5.5 command line tools that I believe were also released freely

<comment><USER4> This seems to be the current location of the museum: [http://edn.embarcadero.com/museum/](http://edn.embarcadero.com/museum/)</comment></comment>


Deconstructing Sega's System 16 Security – Part 2 - <AUTHOR> https://arcadehacker.blogspot.com/2020/04/deconstructing-segas-system-16-security-part2.html <comment><USER2> Part one: [https://arcadehacker.blogspot.com/2019/10/deconstructing- seg...](https://arcadehacker.blogspot.com/2019/10/deconstructing-sega- system16-security-part1.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> The emulation and reverse engineering gurus enabling the retro computer/gaming community do amazing work to preserve these classics for all time.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sega wasn't the only one to use a CPU with embedded crypto, as this set of detailed articles from the same site shows:

[http://arcadehacker.blogspot.com/2014/11/capcom-kabuki- cpu-i...](http://arcadehacker.blogspot.com/2014/11/capcom-kabuki-cpu- intro.html)</comment>


Michael Atiyah has died - <AUTHOR> https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/31190 <comment><USER2> "I always want to try to understand why things work. I'm not interested in getting a formula without knowing what it means. I always try to dig behind the scenes, so if I have a formula, I understand why it's there. And understanding is a very difficult notion. People think mathematics begins when you write down a theorem followed by a proof. That's not the beginning, that's the end. For me the creative place in mathematics comes before you start to put things down on paper, before you try to write a formula. You picture various things, you turn them over in your mind. You're trying to create, just as a musician is trying to create music, or a poet. There are no rules laid down. You have to do it your own way. But at the end, just as a composer has to put it down on paper, you have to write things down. But the most important stage is understanding. A proof by itself doesn't give you understanding. You can have a long proof and no idea at the end of why it works. But to understand why it works, you have to have a kind of gut reaction to the thing. You've got to feel it."

– Sir Michael Francis Atiyah

</comment><comment><USER3> Sad to hear that Michael Atiyah has died. I studied many of his papers, and I enjoyed his classical "Introduction to commutative algebra" (which is by no means an introduction to the field). Also I had the honor to meet him several years ago in person. He had a kind and humble character, and by no means I felt I was discussing mathematics with one of the best mathematicians of the previous century. He was always lowering his level to match mine. He explained everything clear and he gave good advice that helped my career in many ways. Thank you, and requiescat in pace.

</comment><comment><USER4> An amazing mathematician, to put it lightly. I remember learning the Atiyah- Singer index theorem [1] and how it relates to anomalies in quantum theories, it absolutely blew my mind. And then every time I came back to anomalies I would rediscover this fact and be floored again, one of my favorite physics/theory/math connections.

[1] e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atiyah%E2%80%93Singer_index_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atiyah%E2%80%93Singer_index_theorem) (though not the best for the more physics minded)

</comment><comment><USER5> For anyone with an interest in maths, do give [https://youtu.be/uMN5t3tzchI](https://youtu.be/uMN5t3tzchI) a watch

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/31190](https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/31190)

[https://royalsociety.org/news/2019/01/tribute-to-former- pres...](https://royalsociety.org/news/2019/01/tribute-to-former-president-of- the-royal-society-sir-michael-atiyah/)

<comment><USER7> Thanks, we've changed to that first link from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Atiyah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Atiyah).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That makes me sad. He came across as such a gentle and down to earth mathematician. He truly was math nobility.

</comment><comment><USER9> quantamagazine did a nice write up on Michael Atiyah back in 2016. They rightly brought it back to the font page. Here is a link:

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/michael-atiyahs- mathematical-...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/michael-atiyahs-mathematical- dreams-20160303/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow. Sir Michael Atiyah claimed he solved Riemann hypothesis just short four months ago.[1]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18062092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18062092)

<comment><USER11> This is a sad story, mostly about everyone deciding what the most kind way is to treat broken work by someone whose best days are well behind them.

Interesting discussion at: [https://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/3894/is- there-a-way-...](https://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/3894/is-there-a-way- to-discuss-the-correctness-of-the-proof-of-the-rh-by-atiyah-in-mo)

And mathematicians taking him seriously: [https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2018/09/26/reading-into- atiya...](https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2018/09/26/reading-into-atiyahs- proof/)

<comment><USER12> You don't have to be a follower of a famous mathematician to find sadness in the intellectual decline of someone.

Our ability to preserve bodies far longer than mind is a major problem for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's sad to me that people were so hard on him for his last works. I wish mathematics had a positive space for speculation.

<comment><USER14> I followed this reasonably closely, and I didn't see anyone in the Math community criticize Atiyah. And Math is certainly pretty pro-speculation.

People were mostly just sad that journalists were hyping up an obvious case of age-related cognitive decline from a brilliant Mathematician.

And to be clear, Atiyah's last work wasn't speculation – it was completely off, in the "not even wrong" category. Unfortunately, that's pretty common as people get older, but there's no reason to publicize it.

<comment><USER15> >Unfortunately, that's pretty common as people get older

Are there other examples of this in Mathematicians? Nash and Godel come to mind, but both of them had non-math-related issues.

<comment><USER16> i think it is relatively common in creatively brilliant people who become older. some people solve problems in ways that are counterintuitive and against the grain. it takes a lot of courage to do this, especially social courage. so for the few people that have success with this way of thinking, as they get older, they are trying to resummon the processes they've used before. much of that includes not listening to those who tell you you're wrong. but some declination of mental faculties makes this a bit dangerous as the mind isn't as sharp as it once was. although some of it may be even as simple as they miss the attention.

this is my theory anyway.

<comment><USER17> Note to self: Keep a pet-puzzle(s) that is difficult but solvable. As I grow old, keep solving the puzzles to determine how senile I am. No need to believe others assertions at face value.

<comment><USER18> Try these? [https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/AIME_Problems...](https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/AIME_Problems_and_Solutions)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Not-quite-so-broken - <AUTHOR> https://nqsb.io/ <comment><USER2> What is the OTR (Off The Records) protocol?</comment>


Michigan's Great Stink - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/25/opinion/michigans-great-stink.html <comment><USER2> Much like Kansas' decision to cut taxes and then plug the resulting budget hole with cuts to education, Flint's conservative policies were tremendously short-sighted. Poor education in Kansas will lead to increased poverty and crime, and fewer well-trained workers, which will cost the state dearly in 16 years or so. Likewise, Flint is going to spend much, much more cleaning up this mess than they could ever have saved.</comment>


Data Structures in C# - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/riyadparvez/data-structures-csharp

<comment><USER2> It looks great , Now a days to make use of Parallel processing in C# 4.0 , we need a list that can be efficiently partitioned into multiple parts with given part size , such an algo and list class is required.

</comment><comment><USER3> good work! any plan for similar library for C++?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, no recent plan. I think all of these algorithms are already well implemented by their inventors in C++</comment></comment>


This Mutant Crayfish Clones Itself, and It's Taking Over Europe - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/science/mutant-crayfish-clones-europe.html?referer= <comment><USER2> dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16314211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16314211)</comment>


Capacitor plague - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague <comment><USER2> This singlehandedly resulted in a company I was associated with not going public [March, 2010], when we had to take millions of dollars in write downs associated with our devices (which had some of these flakey capacitors) failing in greater than expected rates. I don't think it's an exaggeration to suggest that this problem materially changed my life, and altered the careers of many of those who were in our Manufacturing and QA departments (for the worse)

I also spent the better part of 2003-2005 replacing Dell Optiplex GX270s that had failed motherboards - bulging capacitors - almost 50% of our desktops were turned over.

Plague barely captures how bad it was.

[Edit: Apparently "Plague" was the word being used back in 2005 as well: [http://news.cnet.com/PCs-plagued-by-bad- capacitors/2100-1041...](http://news.cnet.com/PCs-plagued-by-bad- capacitors/2100-1041_3-5942647.html)]

<comment><USER3> I remember on reddit somebody talked about making a serious fortune by specializing in replacing those capacitors on numerous types of devices.

<comment><USER4> I made about $6000 in 2011 resoldering the capacitors in iMac G5s and selling them. It was only feasible because I had about 40 broken iMacs from my old job. But that was enough to pay rent for 6 months in Idaho. For everyone with dreams of VC capital and incubators, I highly recommend just scraping out a living any way you can if it's a stepping stone to your dreams. You can make as much in an hour as other people make all day, and use the rest of the time to code. It worked great until I ran out of inventory, now I mostly work from elance, odesk and freelancer. Taught me some valuable lessons though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> OT: is this a recently added Wikipedia feature?:

> On 18 May 2013, Capacitor plague was linked from Hacker News, a high-traffic > website.[0]

Does anyone know the rationale behind adding this? It doesn't seem like they're auto-locking/semilocking the article to prevent inappropriate edits when an article is linked to from a high-traffic site.

0: <http://i.imgur.com/LWwRQXF.png>

<comment><USER6> I've seen a similar banner for years when /. links to wiki pages. It is just a template that someone pastes on to warn editors that traffic (and thus edit velocity) will be up for a day or two.

<comment><USER5> Ah, I see. I thought it was added automatically when a lot of traffic from one referrer was detected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always use this incident as an example whenever corporate espionage comes up. When you talk about security procedures, there can be a lot of eye rolling about how serious it is, but it can be pretty damn serious.

<comment><USER8> So you tell them to always make sure to steal the whole formula?

<comment><USER7> And do your best to test the damn thing. Stealing it can be almost as hard as inventing it (if turns out to be harder, fire your industrial spies).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Most motherboards and PSUs from this period had these faulty capacitors. I had a computer going bad because of this twice, once in the motherboard (Asus), then the PSU (Thermaltake). Luckily I learned about this and replaced the caps my self, but fixing electronics isn't the norm.

Think about all the electronic junk piled up because of this espionage slip. All the hidden costs and environmental impact caused. I'm sure even software faults could be attributed to that (at least the famous BSODs giving Windows a bad rep, I'm sure). Something impossible to calculate.

</comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps the electronics industry would be in worse shape if our devices did not have these built-in self-destruction mechanisms.

The Viewsonic LCD 1600x1200 panel (2005) that I am reading this article on right now was a victim of the capacitor plague. Acquired it from a colleague who was going to put it on the curb. $5 and an hour of my time replacing 3 caps in the switching power supply (and an SMT fuse on the inverter board) restored it. I did it to add to my skills.

Paper dielectric capacitors were a scourge of older electronic devices, with service lifetimes even shorter than electrolytics. It is amazing how easily many ancient electronic devices may be restored to better-than-new operation just by replacing electrolytic and paper capacitors.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_capacitor>

<comment><USER11> I had a pair of viewsonic VX922 that both failed with in 6 months of each other. Quick youtube how to and a visit to maplin (uk electronics store) got them back on their feet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This singlehandedly almost and should have killed my startup. And the problem was so evil.. not all mainboards got it at the same time.. it was a bell curve distribution, and it started with simple lockups that a reboot could fix (which required a customer service trip). Then the lockups would increase with frequency until it no longer turned on, at which point my company had to replace it with a new mainboard and sometimes chassis for free.

Worst 4 years of my life.

</comment><comment><USER13> A similarly annoying thing are whiskers from early lead-free/RoHS solder :(

<comment><USER14> There is at least one U.S. military contractor whose main line of business is reballing RoHS-compliant SMT components with good ol'-fashioned leaded solder. Because the military depends on electronics that HAVE to work, for a long time, in hostile conditions, and could give two shits about the environment. The Army fires _depleted uranium_ into the earth, you think they care about a bit of lead?

<comment><USER15> To be fair, they're probably not aiming at the Earth.

<comment><USER16> You're aiming at whatever is in front of your barrel. Never point a firearm at anything you're not willing to destroy.

Besides, in this specific case, the whole point of DU is massive penetration, so _of course_ it's going to eventually end up in the ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Was there any legal action in relation to this? If I bought capacitors from a company and used them in manufacturing my products only to find I have to replace large amounts of said product because I was supplied with faulty capacitors then I'd be looking for some compensation from the company I got the capacitors from.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've recently taken up a hobby of fixing dead LCD and plasma TVs. So far, I've fixed every TV/LCD I tried, and so far, 100% of the issue was a blown electrolytic capacitor. It's kind of sad that a 50 cent part kills a $1500 TV. It doesn't take very much expertise. I didn't test the boards. I just looked for bulging caps and replaced them.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is crazy, are there any comprehensive lists of devices that were affected by this? I am a little curious to see what devices, of many that have failed, may have been affected by this. Not that it would really change anything at this point.

<comment><USER20> Basically it's a good deal of the devices in the "iMac G5, Athlon XP, Pentium-4 with HyperThreading" era, or at least that's when I saw it the worst.

Laptops generally weren't affected, as SMD capacitors generally aren't electrolytic.

<comment><USER21> I used to do desktop support for a University, in which my daily job was reclaiming and sifting through hordes of gx270's and gx260's to find working mobos.

I swear they made the cases on those things out of razor blades. I probably could have replace the electrolytic material in most of the blown caps with my own blood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I got pretty good a soldering around this time. Scored a free "broken" monitor and spent about 75 cents for new capacitors :)

<comment><USER23> How do you test for a broken cap? Is there any tutorial on desoldering and soldering them?

<comment><USER24> The easiest test is visual: if the surface is bulging even just a little and/or the capacitor isn't standing straight (this one doesn't apply to Soviet electronics), it has failed. There are lots of tutorials on the net, there is definitely something on <http://www.eevblog.com/> But the way I learned it was to just take an old PSU, try to get a component out and then solder it back on.

[edit:] Some googling found this thread for capacitor testing: <http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=17592> I found the badcaps community pretty good when looking for a new PSU, there seemed to be many knowledgeable posters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was once able to fix a failing motherboard by cutting out the "bulging top" capacitors and soldering new ones of the same spec on the parts of their legs that remained on the board.

That was after almost ruining it by attempting to actually unsolder the original caps from the board. Those things are soldered hard! I tried to apply too much force, slipped, and made a big scratch on the board with the soldering iron. Didn't go through the varnish though.

</comment><comment><USER26> In 2006(ish?), I worked for a subcontractor doing hardware swaps on Dell machines, and these capacitors single handedly accounted for maybe half of all repairs that we had to do during the time (and that's against even trivial and common stuff like laptop keyboards breaking). It really doesn't surprise me that it cost Dell $400M+ to fix these systems - it had the sort of impact that could definitely destroy smaller companies outright.

</comment><comment><USER27> This seems to refer to a specific "bug", a bad electrolyte, but doesn't this eventually happen to all electrolytic capacitors?

<comment><USER28> Many of us have electronic devices from the 1980's and early 90's that haven't failed.

Until Congress sold the television spectrum and the FCC ordered broadcasting to cease, many of us still had non-HD TVs.

<comment><USER29> _Until Congress sold the television spectrum and the FCC ordered broadcasting to cease, many of us still had non-HD TVs._

Um, I still have mine.

I only use it so that the kids can watch DVDs. There is still a good enough selection of DVDs available. I'll upgrade when it breaks and is irreparable. But not until.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If this happens to your Samsung LCD TV, it is a pretty fun project to fix yourself! the only thing you need to is to order to the parts, youtube, and a soldering iron.

</comment><comment><USER31> I personally had two motherboards with this problems and one monitor. I also had 3 graphic cards. Only two of the graphic cards were still under warranty so I had to eat the cost of most of these premature failures. We also had numerous Dell computers at work fail but they were all out of warranty by the time they failed. Knock on wood but my last item failed in 2011 (graphic card) so hopefully this is over.

</comment><comment><USER32> I completely forgot about this, but in high school I did IT for my small school district, and I definitely remember having to replace a huge number of motherboards due to failed capacitors around that time. I think they were all HP computers, and at the time I just assumed it was one bad run from HP's factories, but it must have been this.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm really unconvinced that this continues to be a current problem, and the Wikipedia article is definitely not clear on this. If there are recent examples of this that are clearly documented, it would be great to see some good hard data or sourcing, either here or perhaps the Wikipedia article's talk page.

<comment><USER2> In the introductory paragraph, at the very top of the Wikipedia article, citation included:

"As of 2013 the problem seems to have receded, with the last major surge of complaints being reported in 2010.[7]"'

[7] [http://www.ronhoutman.com/the-capacitor-plague-strikes- again...](http://www.ronhoutman.com/the-capacitor-plague-strikes-again/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Yep, had an iMac G5 with this problem. Apple shipped me an entire replacement system board assembly. Later they started having people take them into Apple Stores for the repair.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/62059256>

</comment><comment><USER35> I still have a Compac 450 workstation that probably would blow up if I turned it on. Got it from BBN when I worked there. Many of the others back then died this death. The thing is a tank! Which is mostly the reason I still have it.

</comment><comment><USER36> I've had several devices blow up or catch fire because of bad capacitors in recent years. These were not very old devices. I'm surprised there haven't been more serious consequences than what has been reported.

</comment><comment><USER37> Is this the same problem that affects first-gen Xboxes?

[http://www.jaguarsector.com/index.php?showtopic=33652&hl...](http://www.jaguarsector.com/index.php?showtopic=33652&hl=xbox+capacitor)

</comment><comment><USER38> i had an original apple airport (UFO style) that blew a cap. this happened my freshman year of college, which was 01/02. wow. memories.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+airport+ufo&safe=o...](https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+airport+ufo&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=UgSXUaTOFqG1iwLSz4CQAg&ved=0CEIQsAQ&biw=1434&bih=786)

to apple's credit, they replaced it without cost. seems like they sent me a refurbed unit with "good" caps.</comment>